On Tue, 14 Aug 2001, Richard Jones wrote:

We're currently trying to neaten up Zope startup (zope startup for dummies is currently a real pain). I ran across the ZopeStartupProvisions wiki, and it's pretty close to what we're aiming for - having a much nicer startup/control script and a configuration file. It's been dormant since April, though, and I'm wondering if there's still anyone backing it?

I wasn't aware of that Wiki, or of zctl.py until after I wrote something of my own along these lines: a 'zopectl' script that has a slightly different design objective than zctl.py. zctl.py seems to be oriented primarily toward managing ZEO instances. zopectl is oriented toward managing multiple INSTANCE_HOME setups running on the same box (eg: production and test instances, migration instances, or indeed multiple zope-instance-per-virthost virthosts). In principle it should be possible to merge the capabilities of zctl.py into zopectl, but since I don't yet have a need to run ZEO I haven't looked in to it. From the Wiki it looks like there is non-ZEO stuff in there that I might find useful. I also only just found out about the multiple Products directories support, and while I haven't had time to add that in yet, I am definately planning on it. I've also got a couple bug reports with patches that I need to integrate (none of the bugs prevent zopectl from working; the fixes reduce certain surprise factors involved in various parameter combinations). Hopefully I'll have time to put new release out soon, zopectl solves the problem mentioned in the wiki regarding shared config files by having a 'master' configuration file and 'instance' configuration files that modify the master settings. In practice, for me, that has proven very effective, and was one of my prime reasons for writing it to start with. (The other prime reason was being able to put 'zopectl start' in my rc file and know that all production zope instances were going to get started with the correct parameters...and then being able to stop and start individial instances later.) I haven't tested zopectl with python 2.x yet, but I suspect it will work fine as I *have* tested the modules it uses under 2.1, and zopectl itself is fairly straightforward (though it could use some refactoring and general cleanup!) You'll find it at http://www.zope.org/Members/rdmurray/zopectl. --RDM